Alexandria Echo Press.  Jan 1st, 2023.  ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND THE HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS.

In terms of religion, all students generally have the equal right to pray, distribute religious literature and form religious clubs. The key is that it must be voluntary, non-disruptive, and cannot involve harassment or discrimination.

The history of religion in public schools is fascinating because it's a history of how the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants (WASPs) dealt with the white ethnoreligious minorities, such as Catholic and Jewish immigrants.

When religion was taught in public schools, it was almost always the majoritarian Protestant religion, to the exclusion of all other religions. Laws generally didn't exist or weren't followed, to protect ethnoreligious minority students from harassment and discrimination. This prompted the rise of more private schools affiliated with a particular minority religion.

The WASP response to these private schools was to propose banning public funding of such schools and restricting Catholic and Jewish immigration. Much of the prejudice directed at white, ethnoreligious minorities did not really decline until after World War II. The war mobilized WASPs as well as white ethnoreligious minorities behind a common enemy — fascism.

The rise of fascism pushed Congress and the courts to protect human rights of white ethnoreligious minorities.

Today, the conflict is less one of "native born" Protestants versus "foreign born" ethnoreligious minorities and more of an ideological conflict between culturally conservative people of faith and people of faith with more liberal cultural values.

While we've seen spikes in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim prejudice, even bias-motivated crimes, the diverse, multicultural heritage of America is the freest and fairest that it has ever been and, arguably, better than any other nation.

That's something Americans of all faiths and no faith can be proud of.

Fargo Forum Newspaper.  June 23, 2022.

What makes America great is when we commit ourselves to the Age of Enlightenment ideas that were used by the Founding Fathers and continue to be used by oppressed people of every background, belief, nationality, class and identity.

The Age of Enlightenment was an amazing time in western civilization because men and some women began to think long and hard about how the government ought to treat its citizens and how we, the people, ought to treat each other.

The great ideas that came out of this age included representative government, liberty, equality, fraternity, the separation between church and state, tolerance, and using science to not only better understand our world, but to help improve it.

Yes, the American Founding Fathers did not apply these ideas perfectly. That part of history needs to be acknowledged and taught honestly.

However, when white, working-class men began to organize labor unions and labor parties, they were invoking these ideas in the search for a more perfect union.

When people of color, women, disabled people, and the LGBTQ community began to campaign for freedom and equality, they, too, were invoking these ideas in the search for a more perfect union.

So great are these ideas, that they are not limited to one particular culture or nationality. They can be found in nations as diverse as the Japanese Meiji Restoration, the Declaration of Independence that the people of Vietnam issued against occupying France, and the American “I Have A Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

If we truly want to “Make America Great Again” we would commit ourselves to these Age of Enlightenment ideas. They are what make America the greatest nation on earth and they can make our nation even greater than thought possible.